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BitTorrent defends its technology via old media

BitTorrent has faced massive amounts of criticism for enabling peer-to-peer file sharing of movies, music and TV shows. But the service is fighting back to improve its image.

And it’s using old-school media—namely, billboards—to make the point.

Recently, billboards popped up in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles proclaiming the following:

• Your data should belong to the NSA
• The internet should be regulated
• Artists need to play by the rules

The billboards’ messages are clearly contrary to everything that BitTorrent stands for. So after a few days, they were “altered” with graffiti-style writing to suggest things like:

• Your data should belong to you
• The internet should be people-powered
• Artists need options

"The idea behind this campaign was to reintroduce the technology and the brand to a wider audience," said BitTorrent’s vice president of marketing, Matt Mason, told Advertising Age. "Everyone wrongly associated the word BitTorrent with piracy, when it's a legitimate Internet technology that moves 40% of the world's Internet traffic, more than http."